Deportation flight departs from Germany for Afghanistan

For the first time since the Taliban retook power, a deportation flight to Afghanistan took off from Germany's Leipzig/Halle Airport on Friday morning, government officials confirmed, reported dpa.

"These were Afghan nationals, all of whom were convicted criminals who had no right to stay in Germany and against whom deportation orders had been issued," German government spokesman Stefan Hebestreit said on Friday.

The Qatar Airways charter jet carrying 28 Afghan men departed for Kabul at 6:56 am (0456 GMT), according to the Interior Ministry in the eastern state of Saxony, which includes Leipzig.

The men had been brought from across the country to Leipzig for the flight. Sources confirmed to dpa that all the Afghan citizens aboard the flight are men.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, whose ministry organized the operation, thanked police and state authorities for their close cooperation in a post on X on Friday.

"Our security counts, our constitutional state acts," Faeser said about the deportation flight.

Germany does not maintain diplomatic relations with the Taliban rulers in Kabul.

Flight follows Mannheim knife attack

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that following the deadly knife attack in Mannheim at the end of May, the deportation of the most dangerous criminals and terrorist suspects to Afghanistan and Syria would be made possible again.

Individuals suspected by security authorities of being capable of the most serious politically motivated crimes, including terrorist attacks, are included in this decision.

The debate has been reignited by last week's deadly knife attack in the western city of Solingen that left three people dead, where the main suspect is a 26-year-old Syrian man who is believed to have evaded a deportation order.

Der Spiegel news magazine reported that planning for Friday's deportation flight to Afghanistan had been under way for two months.

Controversy over Afghan deporations

Deportations to Afghanistan and Syria have been deeply controversial in Germany, given the abysmal human rights records of the ruling governments in both countries.

The Greens, a key coalition partner to Scholz's centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), have been particularly hesitant to back such a step.

Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, a Green, has also warned against any steps that might indirectly recognize the hard-line Islamist Taliban regime.

In a radio interview on Tuesday, Baerbock said that deportations to Afghanistan and Syria would be "possible in individual cases," but that a decision to go through with a deportation to those countries is "obviously not trivial" given the brutal regimes in power there.

By Michael Zehender, Martina Herzog and Sebastian Engel, dpa.